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A Voice for Men uses pic of brutalized woman to illustrate post blaming feminists for domestic violence

[TRIGGER WARNING for picture of brutalized woman]

If you want to show someone what sort of website A Voice for Men is, have them look at the following screenshot, which I’m putting below the jump because it may well trigger some readers in its depiction of the effects of domestic violence on women:

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avfmdriversuzDV
Screencap from A Voice for Men

The picture, as you can see, illustrates a recent post by Suzanne McCarley, otherwise known on the internet as Driver Suz.  (Regular readers of the Man Boobz comment section may remember her as the troll who was the first runner up for Man Boobz’ Special-est Snowflake Award for 2012.)

This isn’t the first time that A Voice for Men has used a picture of a brutalized woman to illustrate a post about domestic violence. The last time, the picture illustrated a notorious post from site founder Paul Elam suggesting that Domestic Violence Awareness month be replaced by “Bash a Violent Bitch Month.”

Here’s a screencap from that post, which I wrote about in more detail here:

Screencap from A Voice for Men

In her post, McCarley refrains from this sort of violent fantasy, but her basic argument – that feminism perpetuates domestic violence for profit – is even more insidiously victim-blaming.

McCarley makes it clear from the start that her post will be largely fact-free, announcing plainly that “I’m not going to quote lots of statistics and studies, or variables and technicalities.”

After some rhetorical fumfering, Suz sets forth her basic argument, such as it is:

Without DV victims, feminists would have no rallying cry, and they would lose political power.  Here’s how it works:

Thanks primarily to the Violence Against Women Act, DV has become a multi-billion dollar industry.  This industry employs many thousands of people throughout the nation, paying them with federal VAWA grant money.  And those thousands of people have made relatively little headway in achieving their “goal” of reducing DV.  Indeed they perpetuate it.  This is by design; if DV went away, so would their jobs. 

Every single one of these people would happily give up their job if domestic violence went away.

And in fact, as Suz would know if she had indeed done even a tiny bit of research on this subject, domestic violence has fallen considerably since the early 1990s. Indeed, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in its most recent statement on the subject, reports that “from 1994 to 2010, the overall rate of intimate partner violence in the United States declined by 64%,” with similar rates of decline for both male and female victims. That’s more than a “little headway”; that’s huge.

Suz continues, oblivious to the fact that the basic factual premise of her argument is dead wrong:

There are many, many factors involved in DV, and it’s no coincidence that feminist policies aggravate nearly all of them, but for the sake of clarity I’m going to address only a simplified but significant few of them here.

Who commits a substantial proportion of DV?  Past victims or witnesses of DV.  Who committed the DV that they experienced or witnessed?  In too many cases to count, it is women.  Women commit far more than half of all DV.  Among the vast majority of violent couples, the violence is mutual.  Additionally, women commit the majority of child abuse. Yes, women are responsible for most DV.

Not true. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, over the period of 1994-2010, “about 4 in 5 victims of intimate partner violence were female.” Numerous other studies using different methodologies also find that women make up the majority of victims. The only studies that find similar rates of abuse – which are also, not coincidentally, the only ones that MRAs like to cite – are based on problematic methodologies that end up essentially equating mild and severe violence, pretending that a slap on the face is basically the same as a severe beating when it comes to determining which gender is responsible for the most abuse. (For more details, see here.)

Next point, what often triggers DV?  Stress.  What causes women lots of stress?  The constant obligations of child rearing.  What causes even more child rearing stress?  Not having a father in the family.  How are so many fathers removed from their families?  They are accused of Domestic Violence, whether it happened or not, and whether it’s mutual or not.  Disagreements are exaggerated, violence is “invented” or men are blamed for any real violence that does occur.

Suz, naturally, presents no evidence for any of this; she’s simply repeating a basic MRA catechism. Removing violent fathers from the home makes the home less stressful, not more.

The result is that fathers, often the most stable influence in the family, are kicked to the curb and financially bled dry, while mothers are protected and are excused for their “missteps;” this is the unstable – and all too often abusive – environment in which their children are raised. 

Violent fathers are not exactly a “stabilizing” influence on the home.

Toss in a few more variables like substance abuse, a string of violent boyfriends, and a bit of poverty, and this process is guaranteed to produce future domestic abusers. 

And feminism is responsible for this how?

And this is the process that VAWA has institutionalized.  It no longer happens “once in a while;” it is SOP.  Was this the intent of VAWA?  Who cares?  That’s the result.

Well, actually, you just said explicitly that feminists intentionally perpetuate domestic violence in order to make money. You’re moving the goalposts in your own post?

Feminism cares about controlling, dominating, destroying and extorting the men who pay Feminism’s bills.  Everything else is window dressing.

Citation fucking needed.

A Voice for Men uses violence porn to fight against those who fight against domestic violence. And Suzanne McCarley is happy to help.

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Kim
Kim
11 years ago

Who even thinks of that idea? Let alone accuses other people of doing it?

It’s cookie cutter conspiracy theory. I wonder what other conspiracies she believes… they rarely believe just one.

Burgundy mentioned the “cure for cancer” one, but there are loads of others. Like the “US government is building concentration camps” or “the holocaust never happened”. I’m sure feminists are behind both of those as well.

Roscoe P. Coltrane
Roscoe P. Coltrane
11 years ago

The CDC reports that “1 in 4 women (24.3%) and 1 in 7 men (13.8%) aged 18 and older in the United States have been the victim of severe physical violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime (Black et al., 2011).”
http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/intimatepartnerviolence/consequences.html

This does not seem to agree with the other figure you quoted, used by the BJS, stating that only 1 in 5 victims of intimate partner violence were not female.

David, notwithstanding the above CDC figure, I personally don’t find it at all “problematic” to call it “domestic violence,” or call it serious, or treat it as worthy of criminal prosecution, when either a male or a female in an intimate partner relationship commits a low-level act of intimate partner violence (IPV) like a slap on the face. That’s an act worth calling domestic violence, and it’s worth intervening over, and this label of IPV in no way trivializes more severely violent acts of IPV.

What does trivialize IPV is when we only treat IPV as serious if it’s lethal enough. It’s plenty serious, all along the spectrum of severity, especially because it could provoke either party to escalate a fight and with an even more intensely violent retaliation.

mamaliberty
11 years ago

Reblogged this on MamaLiberty's Weblog and commented:
RE-VICTIMIZING OVER AND OVER AGAIN. All together now…”The wheels of ABUSE go round and round”

LBT
LBT
11 years ago

RE: Kim

Don’t forget the troy ounces of gold and maritime law cranks. I’m still boggled by that one. Plus the fluoride in the water and the anti-vaxxers.

ShakaKhan
ShakaKhan
11 years ago

‘Every single one of these people would happily give up their job if domestic violence went away.’

Yep. Unless every cop and lawyer I know is lying to me, DV cases are the absolute pits. They’re incredibly dangerous (whether you’re going on a call or involved in a case with an abuser), complicated and really show you how low humanity can go. And yes, they often involve the victim doing incredibly stupid things, like taking their abuser back or dropping charges (or at least trying to). Sometimes it’s even for financial reasons – like being able to keep your kid in an apartment instead of on the street, or so you don’t have to prostitute yourself for food (whatta bunch of gold diggers). But no one’s getting rich.

The Kittehs' Unpaid Help
The Kittehs' Unpaid Help
11 years ago

Welcome, Ned and BritterSweet!

There’s definitely something scary dangerous about bananas. One of my cats squints and looks at me like I’d done something cruel to her every time she sniffs one I’m eating.

themisanthropicmuse
11 years ago

Why do they even bother with articles anymore? MRAs we fucking get it… you think WOMEN ARE EVIL AND RESPONSIBLE FOR EVERYTHING BAD THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED. That’s what everything you type always boils down to. To use additional words is a pointless exercise. The message remains the same.

mxe354
mxe354
11 years ago

@Ned

…and accusing those who stand up for victims of domestic violence of using someone’s physical and emotional pain to further some political or ideological agenda is just fucking bullshit. I can’t put it any other way.

I’ve heard that accusation far too many times. What I find funny is that it rests on the assumption that social justice movements that are political in nature are, without exception, exploitative and dishonest just because they’re political. God forbid the possibility of a movement being beneficial for humankind.

clairedammit
clairedammit
11 years ago

When I first quit eating meat about a decade ago, I ran into way too many conspiracy-lovers on a vegetarian email list I belonged to. A couple of them linked to Educate-Yourself to back up their arguments. http://educate-yourself.org/ It’s my favorite conspiracy site. You can almost trace where the conspiracies came from if you follow enough of the links. The FEMA one is especially fun – http://educate-yourself.org/cn/femaoverview06sep05.shtml

Deoridhe
11 years ago

I ave nothing worthwhile to day but… kittens.

cloudiah
cloudiah
11 years ago

if AVfM has to exist, I am so glad David and all manboobzers are here to dissect their arguments and mock them, and to remind me that most people are decent and empathetic.

Also I liked burgundy’s “Peak Asshole” metaphor — but hope we’re close to reaching it, because I don’t think the world can take too much more.

Amatyultare
Amatyultare
11 years ago

The depressing part is, I’ve seen this argument enough times that I’m mildly desensitized to how awful it is.

(Although I’m confused as to how single mothers simultaneously bleed their ex-husbands dry financially and remain poverty-stricken. That’s a twist I haven’t seen before.)

LBT
LBT
11 years ago

RE: clairedammit

Oh lordy, the vegetarian/militant vegan conspiracy nuts. There aren’t many of them, but those I’ve run into give me the screaming meemies.

*looks at link* …hydrogen peroxide as a miracle cure. Oooookay then.

cloudiah
cloudiah
11 years ago

clairedammit: Wow, just their website design gave me the same screaming meemies as LBT. (Hope you don’t mind sharing, LBT.)

cloudiah
cloudiah
11 years ago

Ha ha, David’s post about the MRM being less popular than horse porn is now a citation on Rationalwiki:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Men's_rights_movement

Myoo
Myoo
11 years ago

@Amatyultare

(Although I’m confused as to how single mothers simultaneously bleed their ex-husbands dry financially and remain poverty-stricken. That’s a twist I haven’t seen before.)

That’s because they spend all the money on SCENTED FUCKING CANDLES, obviously.

LBT
LBT
11 years ago

RE: cloudiah

Feel free to take all the meemies you want. (Through sheer coincidence, the conspiracy whackjobs I get exposed most to are the really creepy pagan types.)

clairedammit
clairedammit
11 years ago

(Although I’m confused as to how single mothers simultaneously bleed their ex-husbands dry financially and remain poverty-stricken. That’s a twist I haven’t seen before.)

That’s because they spend all the money on SCENTED FUCKING CANDLES, obviously.

And colored towels!

cloudiah
cloudiah
11 years ago

And throw pillows!

hellkell
hellkell
11 years ago

I bought colored towels this weekend, and totally forgot I was oppressing Mr. HK because of that.

La Strega
11 years ago

Dang, I spent six months in the trenches as an advocate for victims of domestic violence, and the organization didn’t even give me gas money. I wuz robbed!

La Strega
11 years ago

I entered my url address wrong.

cloudiah
cloudiah
11 years ago

hellkell, you forgot you were oppressing Mr. HK? YOUR PRIMARY MISSION IS OPPRESSING MEN. How dare you forget that, even for a second. Now light a scented candle and atone for your sins against imaginary feminism.

hellkell
hellkell
11 years ago

Yes, Mistress Cloudiah.

Sporklift
Sporklift
11 years ago

I do think that they lead charmed lives. It’s the only explanation that really fits. It’s an abstract concept to them because they don’t know anyone who has been abused.

What they don’t know is that the people in their lines who